I had my guard up this week when I sat down with Cat
Jameson and her husband, Steve, to watch The United States of Autism. Let's face it, there are a lot of autism movies, and a lot more
in the pipeline. I'm interested in causation, not awareness, and I don't view
autism as something we just need to get up close and personal with and all
shall be well. And really, how good can something be that sprang to life thanks
in part to a $50,000 grant from Pepsi?

My guard started dropping partway through the amazing
opening credit sequence. I leaned over to Cat and whispered, "That's
$50,000 worth of animation right there."

Well, it could have been, but as I learned later, the
director and executive producer, Richard Everts, sat down and taught himself to do it
after an a professional wanted a couple of thousand dollars for just the first few seconds. I
learned that from Richard's wife, Sugey Cruz-Everts, also an executive producer, who attended the screening in
Arlington, Va.

But on to the film itself. The gimmick is some guy taking
reluctant leave of his wife and son and running around the country for 40 days,
dropping in on lots of families with autism and a few experts, interacting,
popping questions, shaking hands, hugging, and heading on down the road. At one
level, it's like a bunch of Love It or List It episodes on HGTV jammed
together: Host and (unseen) camera crew arrive at the door, family
greets them, they go inside and chitchat for a few seconds about their difficult circumstances (two kids in one bedroom, etc., if we're talking HGTV).
Once over lightly, but from a darker place.

Well, it could have been, if not for the guy they chose to do
all that running around -- Everts himself. His interactions with the families
don't have to be long and wordy because they are honest, human, and beautifully constructed -- and because Everts avoids the traps of this kind of filmmaking -- insipid narration, icky empathy, lingering fadeouts, tears for the sake of tears.

What you get instead are vivid glimpses of high-functioning kids and adults,
full-syndrome kids who do or don't
respond to various treatments, siblings who are coping or not (the one who really, really wants her sister to stop talking about "dictators" all the time is priceless), tales of
bullying and acceptance and all the rest (including the stunning comment from a Muslim mom that a bystander compared her son to a terrorist during a meltdown).

You have to admire the sheer energy and intelligence that shines through
-- not just the geographic pace, but the smart decision to whack the
daylights out of just about every interview and leave the nubbin, whether it's
two or three minutes or two or three sentences.

At one point, Everts arrives in New York City to
interview Ezra Susser of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia
University. Setting up the interview, driving
into New York, getting into the building, setting up the camera, making
smalltalk, doing the interview, then doing it all in reverse ... that's a lot of
work (and money) for only a minute or so of film.

But it's quite a minute. Here is a guy with gravitas saying that you might be able to discount half of the increase in
autism due to better diagnosis, etc., but you're left with a fivefold increase.
Fivefold! I might pick at that number, but it's a great thing to get on film
and a great person to get it from. You don't have to go on about the epidemic
after that; you just know that the people you're meeting in this film had
no comparison just a couple of decades ago. Enough said, so to speak.

For me, the best scenes in the movie are Everts'
interactions with the kids and their sibs: sword-fighting with them in the
living room -- I can hear my mother yell, you could put your eye out with that
thing! -- spraying a delighted boy with a garden hose in the driveway, etc.
Yes, it's set up to happen, but it comes across as fun, not fake.

Some of the kids say wise things into his camera, but
some are just, well, kids. There's one little boy trying to say what his sibling's autism means for him. "It's like well, it's like, it's like," says
the boy, about 10 times. He's just too young to be able to say anything, and the
way Everts shakes with laughter is, to me, the best moment in the movie. Autism
isn't funny, but life still is.

Everts' appreciation for these families is a mirror of his own
life back home in Pennsylvania with Sugey and their severely affected 14-year-old, Tommy. We see an evolution in Everts' approach to his son -- aided by a remarkable family reunion -- that is subtle and unforced but deeply
moving.

Oh, and about causation? There was enough for me. Lin
Wessels: "I believe Sam's autism was caused by the mercury in
vaccines." Thank you, Ma'am! (And thanks for wearing the Age of Autism
T-shirt -- so did another parent.) Tim Welsh talks about vaccines, and so does Dan
Burton. (Everts went to Washington because he had appointments to see several
movers and shakers, all of whom canceled. So let's not hear any whining from
the "experts" about who he talked to and who he didn't.)

Sugey said afterwards that more and more screenings are
being set up -- the one we went to was sold out, and I can see why. Word of
mouth on this movie must be great. She also talked about getting Oscar consideration -- which requires being in a theater for a week each in New York and
Los Angeles. Regardless of what happens, I think we'll be hearing -- and seeing
-- more from the Everts.

I for one can't wait.

--

Temple Grandin needs to stick to her subject matter
expertise. "And Dr. Grandin," asked S.E. Cupp on MSNBC this week,
"why are you seeing such a dramatic rise in the number of autism cases?
Have we gotten better at diagnosing or are we overdiagnosing?" (That's a clown question, bro!)

Here is Grandin's
answer: "Well I think it's because the definition of autism over the
decade has expanded. In my book The Autistic Brain, the whole history of a
diagnostic manual is, go through it. Each decade or so they keep changing it,
and they broadened it, where in the DSM-IV you no longer had to have speech
delay, where now they're kind of tightening it up a bit.

"So some of it is just increased diagnosis. I can
think of kids I went to college with that I know were on the spectrum. I have
worked with people in meat plants that I know are on the spectrum but they run
the maintenance shop. Now why is an old gray-hair like me got the job? Because
as a little kid he was taught manners, he was taught social skills."

I'm not exactly clear on the plain prose sense of some of
that -- I think she means that she ended up with a PhD rather than as a
maintenance shop supervisor in a meat plant because her parents taught her manners
and social skills.

But lending her gravitas to "increased diagnosis" as an
explanation of the 1 in 50 rate that was flashing on the screen at the same
time is incorrect and unfortunate.

Comments

cia,
Your long term breastfeeding is likely responsible for your daughter's good health. Mother's milk is strongly anti-inflammatory, aids healing, prevents infection and is powerful in establishing and maintaining healthy gut flora. The health benefits of having been breastfed, especially for years, as nature intended, lasts for a lifetime. Good for you and thanks for bringing it up so that young parents can learn. Formula makers (Pharma) would have people think that their products are just as good. Breastfeeding, like vaccination, is also somewhat of a taboo topic. Isn't it interesting that they are both tied to the same commercial interests?

I remember Bachmann's comment, from Oct. 2010. I had a letter to the editor published about it. She said she had talked to a mom who said her daughter had reacted to Gardasil by becoming mentally retarded, and had believed her. What is there in this statement that was unbelievable, or that justified the feeding frenzy which followed? All the vaccines cause brain damage (and I believe every vaccine always causes at least a little, the inflammation that all vaccines always cause extends to the brain to some degree), why should this damage not include permanent impairment of cognitive function?

Twyla, you should read both of Hilary Butler's books, they're both brilliant, but From One Prick to Another includes several chapters on Gardasil, its dangers and inefficacy. Merck tests proved that in girls previously exposed to the virus, and it turns out now that HPV viruses are ubiquitous in our environment, and not acquired only through sexual contact, and many babies and toddlers have tested positive for exposure, the vaccine greatly increased the incidence of dangerous cervical lesions. And much, much more evidence proving that this is yet another extremely dangerous, useless vaccine.

That's another question which might be profitably researched. My brother and I were damaged by the DPT, but were very healthy all through our childhoods (and overall, ever since). My daughter, damaged by the hep-B and DTaP, which caused her autism and GI disease, has always been otherwise very healthy, is rarely sick, has no allergies etc. She had pertussis and chickenpox, breast-fed on demand for years, has always eaten a lot of organic fruits and veggies, has only had antibiotics on three occasions (she's thirteen now). Lauren Feder cites evidence that the natural disease pertussis has cured asthma, and measles has cured eczema. Maybe getting natural diseases helps to straighten out immune response even after vaccine damage? My daughter did not have the MMR, varicella vax, or any of the newer ones, just polio, hib, and DTaP (besides the one fateful hep-B the day she was born). She had pertussis (despite the vaxes) and chickenpox. These factors may or may not have made any difference. I'm certain that a large number of children developed some degree of autism from the DPT (or individual vaccines before the '40s), because I know so many healthy, verbally impaired people that I'm sure were damaged by the DPT. But I think most of the autists before the '80s were minimally-damaged (so to speak) and remained basically healthy, like most of the autistics in Scandinavia today, with much lower rates of autism and usually much less severe autism when it occurs. A study should certainly be done on how many of our autistic children are immuno-compromised. Would it be from genetic factors, number of vaccines, age at which given?

I commented somewhere a few weeks ago that there was no reason to believe that Temple Grandin had any expertise on the autism epidemic. OK, she had autism, but, like most autists, never had children, and so never had to research vaccine damage before deciding if and how to vaccinate, and never had a vaccine-damaged child to motivate her. She herself was undoubtedly damaged by the DPT vaccine that my brother and I reacted to with days of encephalitic screaming, and the subsequent development of Asperger's syndrome. And, as a vegetarian and animal rights advocate, it troubles me that Grandin receives such high praise for her ability to "think like an animal" because of her disability, and design a system for slaughterhouses to fool cows into thinking they're safe as they approach the fatal blades. Some who are the victims of any iatrogenic damage will research it and realize that it was the medical system which had damaged them, often becoming advocates for change, while others, equally victims, will continue to revere the medical system and deny that it had caused their damage, especially if they profit from the system.

John;
I think academics, like anyone can change their views. Some ( like Dr Poling) will change through personal experience. Some (like Dr Wakefield) will investigate the facts for themselves. And as evidence piles up, some will slowly be convinced by the accumulating data.
If you notice many more mainstream scientists are now talking about environmental factors in autism..
And fewer and fewer are saying the increase is purely "better diagnosing".
Slowly more and more studies are looking at probiotics and gut flora.

Yes, I believe academics can and will change their views. I know one science type friend who was dogmatically certain global warming wasn't happening. ( To be honest, I'm more concerned about autism affecting so many children than I am about the weather, so I have never had much input on his views either way.)
The other day, he was saying that he is now changing his mind. Too many facts on the other side.

I have just come across this observation in the blog of Dr David Healy using thalidomide as an example:

"But there is an even more profound problem (S7). Any of you who are waiting for Health Canada, FDA or academics to agree that a drug has caused a problem will be waiting forever. The response from companies and regulators to thalidomide was that how do we know that it’s not preventing spontaneous miscarriages so that these children who wouldn’t have been born if their mother hadn’t been on the drug are now being born. They did not concede the obvious – that the drug was causing the problem."

PoliticalGuineaPig; it all depends on your point of view, I suppose.
I'm all for medical interventions; as long as those interventions improve the health of a particular individual, not worsen it.
Some illness used to kill; some with autism die as a result of drowning, wandering or seizures. Autism can kill too.( These death rates are quite a bit higher than the general population; you can check the numbers.)

However when you see cases such as Alex S. ( may he rest in peace) its hard to see an outcome to any illness that left me alive that I personally would find worse than being in pain, unable to communicate at all , and tied down to a bed for 19 plus days till someone cared enough to start complaining. ( You might want to read about the recent events at Loyola hospital) and this was the "best' treatment a modern hospital could provide for him..
If I was in Alex situation, I would want everyone to do everything they could to prevent more situations like mine, and to do everything they could to find enough of a cure to at least take the pain away and help me talk.

What possible sequel to a vaccine preventable disease that left you alive do you see as worse than what Alex went through?

Why in heaven's name would some blog commenter think that he or she was in a position to make a pronouncement about lumbar punctures? Assuming the reference is to the Lancet children, the court ruled that in the cases where Dr. Walker-Smith ordered lumbar punctures, they were clinically indicated.

I'm no fan of Michele Bachman. But what she said about Gardasil is true. Maybe "mental retardation" was not quite the right phrase - maybe "cognitive impairment" would be more fitting, since "mental retardation" tends to imply something that was present since childhood and involves an IQ tested at below a certain level.

But Bachman was honestly repeating what was told to her by a mother. And this report is consistent with many other reports of post-gardasil vaccine injury. Here are some excerpts from these reports:

"memory loss"

"I am unable to concentrate for any length of time."

"I am no longer able to perform my job the way I used to. Before Gardasil, I was enrolled in college with a 4.0 and now I cannot even finish a book I am just trying to enjoy."

"brain fog"

"finds it difficult to concentrate and retain information"

"She’s stayed in College, though her grades fell from the Dean’s List prior to the vaccine."

"dizziness and brain fog (complaints of dyslexia)"

"She has struggled to get good grades over the past two years... She was constantly concerned she would lose her college scholarship. I had to let her know it was OK to get a C or even a D if she could just get through to the end of the school year."

"She went from being an Academically Gifted student to one who struggled to complete her 8th grade year of school. She was placed on a modified school plan by her principal who fully backed her because she was an excellent student who had been in the North Carolina Academically Gifted Program since 2nd grade."

"staring or blank episodes… memory loss, confusion, brain fog"

"Her concentration levels are poor and Kelly cannot sit down and read a book, which she always used to enjoy."

"She was an A/B student but was now failing her 10th grade year. She did fail and is now having to re-take the 10th grade."

"My daughter had a 3.8 GPA without even trying and she has failed all her classes since having this vaccination… she has brain fog and from once being the brightest kid on the block, a walking encyclopaedia she has often been called, she has great difficulty in remembering things, in concentrating for any length of time and is not the young academic she once was before Gardasil. Something has damaged my daughter and her school records would confirm her scholastic skills before being vaccinated."

"Memory Loss, Poor Concentration"

"brain fog, short term memory or confusion"

"trouble with short term memory"

"She went from being… Honor roll and straight “A”s her entire life… She is making the first “C”s of her life…"

"unable to concentrate or retain anything she learned in school"

Michelle Bachman was right, and it's amazing how she has been slapped down by a united chorus of politicians and media. Even seemingly good people don't look behind the hype.

Are the HPV vaccines harmless for some people? Will some people be protected from cancer due to the Gardasil and Cervarix vaccines? I don't know, but I do know that it is reprehensible to deny these serious adverse reactions without adequate study. Most of these families are unable to find helpful medical treatments because the conditions are so poorly understood. And it is a travesty that some of these girls showed escalating signs of adverse reactions but continued to get the full series because it didn't occur to anyone that their symptoms (headaches, dizziness, pain, tingling, and more) were vaccine-induced. That is not informed consent.

re: “These ASD kids used to die,” I was told, “but now they don’t. That’s why there’s so many more of them.”
This is pure fiction, an invention with no basis in fact or research.

re: "(Everts went to Washington because he had appointments to see several movers and shakers, all of whom canceled. So let's not hear any whining from the "experts" about who he talked to and who he didn't.)"
Madvocate, I think he means that if some so-called "experts" claim the film is unbalanced, they should keep in mind that the filmmaker tried to interview some govt-med establishment people but they canceled their appointments, refused to be involved.

I heard Temple Grandin speak on the topic of prescriptions drugs for behavior and other issues. She said before trying drugs for behavioral issues you should try the GFCF diet. She said it's not hard - just eat meat, potatoes, rice, vegetables, fruits, and legumes for a few months and see if there's a change. She said based on her many conversations over the years with people all over the country this is worth trying. I was happy to hear her say that.

3 pages, they've been compiling statements since 2009, which doesn't even take into account her time as a state representative. Heck, before her Congress run, she was well-known for her outrageous behavior, lying, and mud-slinging. If she said the sky was blue, I'd need ten confirmations.
What makes you think she could possibly be telling the truth about HPV? Even IF the case actually happened, it's irrevocably tainted by the messenger.(Who would confide in a snake like her anyway?)

Jenny: I never said I thought mitochondrial disorders are natural, nor do I think victims suffering the adverse results of man's scientific tinkering over the past 150 years should be left to suffer pain and misery.

But you don't see anything wrong with the 'pain and misery' quite a few once-common diseases inflicted? Or in subjecting autistic kids to unneccessary procedures like lumbar punctures? Not to mention all the 'cures' I keep hearing about..

I believe Bachmann was repeating what the mother of a Gardasil-injured daughter told her regarding her child's brain injuries.

Why would the term "mental retardation" be the cause of such hilarity? It could be an appropriate description--at least as far as DSM-III-R is concerned:

"DSM-III-R places ‘Mental Retardation’ in the category of ‘Disorders Usually First Evident in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence’. Its essential features are given as

(1) Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning; an IQ of 70 or below on an individually administered general intelligence test (for infants, a clinical judgement of significantly subaverage general functioning, since available IQ tests do not yield numerical IQ values).

I never said I thought mitochondrial disorders are natural, nor do I think victims suffering the adverse results of man's scientific tinkering over the past 150 years should be left to suffer pain and misery.

Quite frankly, I think if the chemical industry (and by extension their clients, the big ag & pharmaceutical industries) decided to quit "discovering" new chemical compounds that they then need to find a "use" for, they would still make unfathomable amounts of money just trying to safely deconstruct and neutralize everything they've put on the market up to now. It could take centuries to untangle their own mess - think of the money!
If they play their cards right, they'd even end up the heroes without the majority of the country catching on that they were the villains to begin with. Kind of like money laundering.

I don't know what Bachman said but certainly vaccines can cause encephalopathies resulting in learning difficulties as well as autism - many autistic people also have learning difficulties. Maybe Bachman was being vague but it certainly is not a ridiculous claim.

Your remark to Jenny is really offensive. Unlike vaccine culture apologists we are mostly not dogmatists.

Ottoschnaut: Nope, sorry, Bachmann's on record. I'm from her state, and it was all over the news. She totally believed it too.
Jenny: I thought your movement was all about 'letting nature take it's course.'

I understand the words, but I hope the implication is not that they should have died, or that we should let nature take its course so that doctors do not have to be "bothered" with handling such complex cases. The numbers keep going up and they need to learn how to treat.

Here we see that some mitochondrial disorders, which we've heard somewhere could be exacerbated by vaccines, could be very underdetected, but that there is new technology to uncover them, and those numbers may be as high as 7% of the population!

I picked up Temple Grandin's new book at Costco, went to the index under "vaccines." Read the page, and when she said that Wakefield's findings have never been reproduced, I decided not to buy it. I was disappointed.

Thank you, Dan Olmsted! I was so pleased that you, Cat and Steve took time out to go and see the film for yourselves. Honestly, I am proud as proud can be! We feel so blessed to have been able to be a part of Richard and Sugey's vision. They are good people with great vision for the autism movement. And.....to have you not only view the film but review it as well. I am so fortunate and truly blessed. Thank you.

“These ASD kids used to die,” I was told, “but now they don’t. That’s why there’s so many more of them.” This startling insight from a pediatric neurologist.

This is the only way these people can live with themselves - to create the fiction that kids with autism would have died - presumably of infectious disease that their vaccines prevented. This is a tacit admission that vaccines cause autism, IMO.

"(Everts went to Washington because he had appointments to see several movers and shakers, all of whom canceled. So let's not hear any whining from the "experts" about who he talked to and who he didn't.)"

I have heard Temple Grandin speak, and when someone asked her about vaccines she said that she has heard many parents mention that their child's issues seemed to start with a vaccination, so it was something that we should look into. In other words, she was open minded and supportive.

I heard Temple grandin speak once and that was enuf times for me. Good person, good mother, but rather wishy washy on the subject of increase. She's been fine over the years for promoting "awareness" but I hope we're beyond that now. She also represents such a small portion of our kids. I doubt good manners would get my grandson through college. She's also wishy washy on the subject of environmental triggers.
Maurine

Vickie;
My example of my two are just the opposite. Born perfect - passed the baby test - real high (I was so proud).

No problems untill the very first vaccine.

Oh yeah I had a double second cousin that died of scarlett fever. She reacted to the antibiotic shot the doctor gave her. Yeap she came all the way to our little town out of the back water creek to get an antibiotic shot and did not make it back to the doc before dying.

Great to hear. Thanks, Pepsi! We consumers really do pay attention to these kinds of things. Just the other day I was looking for sports drinks (it sure was hard to find ones without aspartame or dye but I did and those were the ones I bought). Even the store clerk said that consumers are demanding less of that aspartame crap. L for love, Rumsfeld!

I recall being told at a consultation meeting of our local authority c. 1999 that there were two distinct groups who were placing a new burden on our special needs budget. One was autistic children, and the other was children born with birth defects who would not previously have survived. No room for confusion, I think, between the two - but then they'll just say anything now, won't they? Any kind of commonsense explanation is well past (or a truthful one).

For some, Dan Burns, that pediatric neurologist might not be completely off-base. My son had a very odd immune system from birth. Mononucleosis at 13 months, tested positive for TB at age 7 (NO idea where he picked that up), scarlet fever at age 8, countless ear infections and strep infections...in an age before modern medicine, it is quite likely that he would have died as a young child.

So I think what that pediatric neurologist was saying was that infants and toddlers with weak immune systems - the very types more likely to develop ASD today - might not have lived long in a former age. That has nothing to do with the issue of what causes autism; rather, it just means that we may have more children today who have a higher propensity for autism due to living with a weak immune system.

A psychiatrist well know for his treatment and work with people with autism - told me as- we were suppose to come back to his office and watch of films - of Grandin - that he did not believe she had autism.

So there you are better diagnosis????

Meanwhile; Did you all know that people all grown up - with this - this -- autism - has panic attacks?

“These ASD kids used to die,” I was told, “but now they don’t. That’s why there’s so many more of them.” This startling insight from a pediatric neurologist.
“What did they die of?” I thought to myself. “Did their parents kill them?” Wish I’d asked, but the conversation needed to move on.